


we are made of our longest days

by seoryoungs (inmylife)



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, Introspection, Small Towns, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-10-24 21:50:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20713106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmylife/pseuds/seoryoungs
Summary: Tourists. Vacation. College. Coffee. Awkwardness. A night in the rain. Cars that break. A whole lot of disillusionment.And the party that changes everything.





	we are made of our longest days

_ one. _

Jeongyeon hates tourists. 

Jeongyeon hates all tourists - the old couples, the foreigners, the happy families whose kids walk around wearing sarcastic tee shirts, the middle-aged pairs on weekend getaways, the newlyweds who chose this hellhole (_ Jeongyeon _’s hellhole) for their honeymoon destination - but most of all? 

She hates the partiers. 

The college kids, who cram themselves into houses built for nuclear families but have too many beds in each room, who desecrate the beach and the parks with their trash and their beer cans and their food, who _ feed the seagulls _ despite there being a literal fifty-dollar fine that nobody imposes but dammit, the law still exists, okay?, who are loud every single night of the week but _ especially _ on Fridays, and who - worst of all - throw parties. 

They are loud and they vomit a dozen or more drunk college or postgrad students into the streets and they wreck the rental houses and cause a whole mess for the cleaning crew when they leave because the privileged, lazy college kids don’t know how to clean up after themselves. The worst part is that sometimes the locals even go. Chris and JB go on occasion. Mina went to one once (and hated it, to Jeongyeon’s satisfaction - but she still went). Jeongyeon adamantly refuses to go to any of them, no matter how many times Lia and Seungmin beg her to so they can win that stupid bet they have with Chaeryeong, no matter how curious she got after Mina mentioned meeting a cute girl at the one she’d been to and how that’d been the only good thing about the entire hellish night. 

Or, well. At least she’d held out until now. 

“Please,” Mina begs. “It’s easier to talk you into going than to talk him out of it.”

“He’s a grown man. He can handle himself. He’s older than all of us.”

Mina draws closer. “Some of these people come from really conservative places, Jeongyeon,” she hisses. “It’s already hard enough to be queer here, in the off-season. You - I know you can kick ass, Jeongyeon, you took RAD and taekwondo on the mainland, you have an illegal switchblade, you don’t take shit from anyone. JB? Not so much. And he’s _ trusting _. If anyone finds out he’s trans - if the wrong person finds out, I mean…” 

Jeongyeon jerks back, her face hardening. She knows Mina’s right. And that’s the worst part - that Mina’s right, and worse, that Mina _ knows _ she’s right. Because now she has to go. Yeah, Jeongyeon’s an asshole, and she hates tourists, but her show’s not on Fridays. She’s the only one not working Friday night this week, besides the kids, who’d be damn near flayed if their parents caught them trying to go to a party. And besides JB. 

Jeongyeon’s an asshole, but she’s not so big of an asshole than to ignore Mina on this. Their small tourist town is conservative enough - as a lesbian, she damn well knows that - but some of the people who vacation here are even worse. The college kids usually skew more liberal, sure, but Jeongyeon’s also heard some college kids hurling slurs out their car windows on their way out of town. She doesn’t want to take that chance. 

“Fine,” she huffs, eyes narrowing. “Just don’t tell the kids.”

Mina raises an eyebrow. “Because they’ve got their stupid bet going.” 

Jeongyeon rolls her eyes, sighing, “no, Mina, because Seungmin swore a blood pact with me that I can’t ever - of _ course _ that’s why.” 

“That’s why what?” 

Jeongyeon and Mina both startle as Lia slams open the door to the tiny bookstore where Mina works. The bell on the ceiling rings, obviously, but also Lia opens the door with a force no fifteen year old should possess. 

“That’s why Mina owes me for life,” Jeongyeon answers crisply. Lia blinks and it looks like she’s going to ask for more details, but Mina breaks the moment instead and stands up, snatching her drink and Jeongyeon’s out of the cupholder in Lia’s hands. 

  
  
  


She makes sure to slam the car door extra hard when she and JB arrive at this party. “Why do you even _ go _ to these things?” 

JB huffs. “You didn’t have to come. I can handle myself fine.”

“_ I _ know that,” Jeongyeon grumbles. “Mina made me and you know it. And you didn’t answer my question.” 

He stops, walking back to where she’s leaning up against the drivers side of the car and leaning back next to her. “Well, I guess I went to the first one out of spite,” JB admits. “This, ah, guy - the same one who’s hosting tonight, actually, Jackson, he invited me two years ago to one of these and everyone - including you, I remember - told me oh, JB, don’t go it’ll be no fun we all hate the tourists, and so I went to spite you all. And then I actually had fun, so… I just kept going.”

“I don’t like that answer,” she huffs. 

“Yeah, I know. I know that none of you like that answer.” 

She turns her head to look at him and glares for a moment. When she’s decided the moment’s long enough, she goes back to glaring at the rental house they’re parked in front of. The sign on the front, balanced unsteadily on top of a short wooden fence, says the house is named “Wind Rider.”

She wrinkles her nose. The names people give these houses. And the tourists eat those names up, devouring them straight into their stomach of idyllic island fantasy. They have no idea. No idea. 

“Come on, Jeongyeon.” He takes a few steps forward and turns back to look at her. “You can make me leave as soon as I get too drunk, okay? Which won’t take unreasonably long. Just, I don’t know… hang out, enjoy the music.”

“Enjoy the music,” she mutters. But she starts to follow him in anyway. 

  
  
  


It’s loud. That’s the first thing Jeongyeon notices. This music JB had told her to enjoy? Yeah, she’s definitely not enjoying it - it’s too loud, loud enough that she feels it in her chest and her throat. She squeezes her eyes shut and then, once she realizes what she’s doing, has to fight back the urge to laugh at herself because _ what is closing her eyes going to do against the noise _. 

Everywhere there are people talking, of course. She chances a look around the living room and damn, this poor house is packed to the walls. This is far more people than should be contained in a place like this. The houses here are pretty tiny, intentionally so for the most part, and these tourists have overstuffed it. Jeongyeon is tempted to just leave so she can give the house that much more space to breathe. 

And it smells like beer. 

There’s a very specific, sour smell to beer, there is, and it’s so strong and so solid in here Jeongyeon almost feels like the floor is sticky already, even though it isn’t, at least not yet. God, she pities the housekeeping staff who’ll have to deal with this place. 

As soon as she’s a respectable distance away from the door JB slides in past her, heading straight for a keg and immediately getting chummy with someone Jeongyeon hears him call Jackson. 

Jeez, Mina could have mentioned that JB knew the guy hosting. Then Jeongyeon would have had a great excuse to say “no, Mina, JB will be just fine, none of this bullshit from you,” and could have moved on with her life without ever having to set foot in one stupid tourist party. But no, Mina omitted that detail, and now Jeongyeon’s stuck here because JB had roped her into this whole designated driver role. 

She’s going to kill Mina someday. 

(She isn’t really. She loves her too much. But she’s not about to admit it to Mina, now or ever.)

It seems like everybody at this party has a drink in their hand. Beer bottles, beer cans, glasses of beer, she thinks she sees someone drinking out of those colorful plastic cups they make for kids at one point. Jeongyeon doesn’t even want to think about how many people are here right now. (The answer? _ Too many _ .) She shoulders her way into the only-slightly-less-crowded kitchen, leans back against the counter (and promptly jerks back again to lean against a wall because _ the counter is sticky _), and waits. 

Half an hour. She’ll give JB half an hour, and then she’ll fight her way over to wherever the hell he is, and deem him drunk enough to go home, whether he is or not. 

God, is there anyone else at this party who’s not drinking. 

Being the only sober one is fun sometimes. One time she’d been hanging out with Mina, Chris, JB, and Jamie, and everyone else had gotten drunk, and Jamie had started demanding of Chris, “Why did you let me date you? Why did we do that?” JB is a hyper drunk and started running his mouth pretty soon after Jamie had lost it, and Mina just got so sleepy. Jeongyeon was thoroughly entertained by the whole thing. 

But it’s different at parties, when there are so many people to feed into the drunkenness, to reflect it all back and make it overwhelming. When there are enough people that, inevitably, people are going to start making out in the middle of rooms. Jeongyeon can see at least two couples already, one in the kitchen itself and another just through the doorway in the front room.

There are too many people at this party. Jeongyeon checks the time on her phone again. 

Across the room, she spies a girl without a drink in her hand, moving steadily and uncomfortably through the throng of people. This is not a girl she knows. This is a tourist. 

Figures. 

But she’s the only other person at this party, it seems, who’s not drunk off her ass, and she’s moving in an unflinching trajectory towards Jeongyeon, seeming hopeful. 

Jeongyeon prepares herself to be an asshole. This girl’s a tourist. It won’t be hard. 

She’s got brown hair a little longer than Jeongyeon’s, and big bright eyes. Tan skin, full face, lips turned into a shy smile. Jeongyeon hates to admit it but this tourist girl is pretty in a way that makes her feel almost bad about having to brush her off. 

(Almost.)

“I, um. I like your hair,” says the girl shyly when she finally reaches Jeongyeon, leaning against the wall next to her. Jeongyeon not-so-subtly scoots in the other direction.

Jeongyeon’s hair is electric blue, because nothing screams angry repressed lesbian like a good fluorescent hair color. That’s how JB had put it, anyway. And she likes it better than her teenage years, when she’d given herself a shitty pixie cut in her bathroom and worn flannels for two years straight even in the heat, so she’s thinking she’ll stick with it. “Thanks,” she replies curtly. 

“So… where you from?” the tourist girl presses on, either oblivious to or ignoring Jeongyeon’s clear disinterest. 

“Here.” Jeongyeon says shortly. 

“Oh, you’re in-state? I -”

“No.” Jeongyeon cuts her off. “From in town. If you wanna get technical I was born on the mainland but that’s only because there’s no hospital here.” 

“Oh.” The tourist girl looks down at her hands, all timid. _ Good _, thinks Jeongyeon vindictively. 

But she doesn’t leave, and that irks Jeongyeon. She’s screaming _ I don’t want you here _with her whole body towards this girl, and she simply isn’t picking up. 

“God,” Jeongyeon mutters after two or so minutes of awkward silence, because she’s bored. “Do you have a name, tourist girl?” 

She perks up. “It’s Jihyo!” she responds. “I’m Jihyo.”

“Jihyo.” Jeongyeon repeats the syllables carefully, like she’s tasting it. It’s a satisfying name to say. 

“Do you have a name, local girl?” asks Jihyo, quirking her head at Jeongyeon like she’s looking for brownie points for the parallel structure. 

“It’s Jeongyeon,” she answers. Grudgingly - if she gives this tourist girl her name, what else is she willing to give? - and makes it obviously so. 

Jihyo’s clearly not giving up. “So, uh. If you’re a local, how’d you end up at this party? Jackson said he was only inviting other vacationers - and I mean I don’t really know Jackson it’s just Jinyoung who does and I guess Dahyun knows his friend Chaeyoung but anyway - I mean, I guess, why’d you decide to come?” 

And Jeongyeon’s just annoyed enough about this that she’ll rant about this to anyone who’ll listen, even if that person is a tourist girl who just won’t quit. “JB,” Jeongyeon says distastefully, and points in the general direction of the room that had had the most alcohol in it when they’d come. “He knows this Jackson, _ somehow _, and I’m his… let’s call it a babysitter.” 

“The designated driver?” Jihyo offers. 

“Yeah, that too.” Jeongyeon huffs and, unfathomably even to herself, continues. “He drinks a lot and isn’t too discerning with… who he tells his secrets, and our friend Mina decided he needed a chaperone. Everyone else was working tonight except the kids, and we aren’t letting the kids come to one of these. They’d make shit babysitters anyway.”

A baby-faced girl with blonde hair rushes by - she can’t be more than seventeen, what the fuck, thinks Jeongyeon - followed by a guy who can’t be much older. “Sure isn’t stopping them,” Jihyo comments. 

Jeongyeon just grimaces. “Kids these days. Always with the drinking and the smoking - Mina caught one of the kids with pot the other day, which - well, pot’s harmless but it could be a gateway into something else. On the island we lose all the kids to the mainland or to shitty habits anyway.” 

Jihyo’s eyebrows raise. “What… I mean, I…” 

Jeongyeon barrels on. Might as well teach this tourist girl a lesson about _ why _ she hates them all so much. Maybe then she’ll finally get the hint and leave. “Well, we’re all broke as shit because while there’s a market for all sorts of shit in the summer, your people are cheap as fuck and nobody makes enough. And in the winter the economy’s flat dead. And you know how it is when people don’t have money - or maybe you don’t, since you’re here for pleasure.” She laughs cynically. “They get caught up with the drug companies and the alcohol companies because you people, you come here and you drink and smoke on the beach, and they want to be like you for a while, carefree and _ rich _, and so they drown themselves in the bottle or choke themselves on the smoke, the same way you drown and you smoke our beaches, and everyone who doesn’t just gets the hell out. Breaks their back studying and goes off to some fancy mainland college and then doesn’t come back. Nobody strait-laced stays, ‘cept us.” 

She takes a moment to glare at the tourists and at the abstract concept of JB in bed with them, metaphorically or even literally, who knows. When she spares a glance at Jihyo, she sees the shock she’d expected to garner with her little rant. It doesn’t feel as satisfying as she thought it would. 

“Who’s _ us _?” asks Jihyo, when there’s a brief break in the pounding music reverberating through the walls. 

“Me. JB, Mina. Chris and Jamie. The kids - that’s Chaeryeong, Seungmin, Lia. The island queers,” she quips, glancing over at Jihyo to see if there’ll be a disgusted reaction she needs to look out for. 

Instead, inexplicably, she sees Jihyo relax. “We’re all gay,” she spills out. “Me and everyone I’m staying with, Jinyoung and Nayeon, Bambam and Yugyeom are together and so are Sana and Dahyun, and I mean this is a red state and we’re from up north so I guess I was worried that -”

“Don’t say it too loud,” Jeongyeon shushes her with a cynical laugh. “We get all types down here.” 

Jihyo turns a funny shade of red, a color Jeongyeon wasn’t even sure people with their skin tone could turn. “Right. Sorry.” She looks around for a moment and says to Jeongyeon, a little quieter, “can I tell you something?” 

Jeongyeon sighs. “Sure, shoot.” 

“I think Jackson invited us because his friend Chaeyoung wants to threesome with Sana and Dahyun,” Jihyo says very quickly and very quietly. In spite of herself, Jeongyeon laughs. 

“Certainly a valid reason to get invited places.” 

The music keeps pounding, ceaselessly. The alcohol smell is getting stronger and someone’s turned on a strobe light somewhere and now Jeongyeon’s head is starting to hurt. The wall of this kitchen is tiled like a bathroom floor and the floor’s been floored with plastic made to look like wood. God, Jeongyeon hates rap music. Why did she let Mina talk her into this? (She knows why.) 

“So…” Jihyo starts, and then Jeongyeon sees her think better of it. 

“No, ask me,” Jeongyeon says. She’s starting to hate this girl a little less than she’d hate the average tourist, and she hates that. She needs a good stupid question to recapture her burning, blind hatred. Damn, she’s getting soft. 

“Well… what’s your job, then? That you can bitch about the economy and talk about it all generally, like it doesn’t hurt you.” 

Jeongyeon’s maybe taken aback. Tourist girl’s observant. “Radio station,” she answers. “The one right across from where you come off the bridge. Mina works at the bookstore on the same street as all the ice cream shops - I know it seems more like tourist bait than the other one, but it actually gets more traffic year-round. Lia and JB both work at the only decent coffee place on the island, the only one that doesn’t sell tchotchkes. The one behind the Vietnamese bakery, same road as Mina. The others bounce around in the off-season, but Chan and Jamie are lifeguards, and I think Chaeryeong and Seungmin are working at the movie theatre this summer?” 

“Jeez,” laughs Jihyo, (and _ fuck _ , she has a pretty laugh, what is it that Jeongyeon said that made her laugh, Jeongyeon hates herself _ she’s gone soft dammit! _), “you didn’t need to give me everyone’s whole resume!” 

Now Jeongyeon’s the one turning an improbable color, or at least she must be. Her cheeks are certainly warm enough. 

She looks down at her phone to hide her embarrassment, and oh! - it’s been long enough, she can leave now. “Sorry, gotta dash,” she says hurriedly. “Gotta go find my idiot friend and then we gotta _ dash _.”

Jeongyeon weaves through the churning sea of people, eyes roaming, searching for JB. She finds him in the living room, shirt still on thank _ god _, making out with some tall, floppy-haired boy who’s got one hand on a cane and the other hand around JB’s neck. “Oh,” comments Jihyo, who startles Jeongyeon because she’d had no idea the tourist girl had followed her. “Jinyoung’s enjoying himself, I see.”

It doesn’t take long - in fact, it takes milliseconds - for Jeongyeon to put the pieces together. “He’s trans,” she says, almost defensively. She knows it’s not her place to out him, but she can’t help feeling a little protective. Getting involved with a tourist? Christ, she knew JB was chronically horny but she thought he knew better than _ this _. 

Jihyo shrugs. “So’s Nayeon. Jinyoung won’t care.” 

Jeongyeon feels chagrined. “Oh.” 

She marches on, storms forward up to JB and claps her hand on his shoulder. He flinches and pulls back, unbalancing his partner - this Jinyoung - for a second before he catches himself on a high-backed fancy-looking armchair, a satiny pink one with ass-ugly embroidery Jeongyeon finds easily distasteful even in this low light. “Time to go, Casanova.” 

JB looks at Jeongyeon. He’s pleading. The puppy-dog eyes have come out tonight. “But I’m having so much fun…” 

She scans him critically for a moment. “...Yeah, you’re definitely nearing taking-your-shirt-off drunk. I’ve done my duty, we’re going home.” 

“Bye, Jinyoung,” he says dreamily. Jeongyeon wants to punch him. 

“Asshole. Come _ on _.” 

She has to drag JB out of the party, but once they’re out the door he follows complacently to the passengers seat. Jeongyeon shoves her keys in the ignition a little harder than she needs to - fine, a lot harder - but nobody needs to know that. 

  
  
  


_ two. _

So maybe Jihyo’s a little bit curious. Maybe she’s more than a little bit curious. Maybe Jihyo is just very whipped and very gay. 

Jihyo has a crush. 

She sits, in the car, outside the Vietnamese bakery and least-touristy coffee shop, deliberating. 

Jeongyeon-from-last-night was very pretty, and Jihyo’s thoughts were invaded by her soft voice and hard manner and painfully blue hair from when Jeongyeon had bolted with her friend to when Jihyo, Sana, and BamBam had all stumbled home (Jinyoung and Dahyun chose to stay and party a little longer, and Nayeon and Yugyeom hadn’t gone in the first place). When she’d flopped onto the twin bed in the low-roofed room she’s sharing with Sana for the week, she’d stared up at the ceiling (cream-colored, stucco), starstruck, watching the blades of the ceiling fan go around and around and trying to sort out her thoughts. 

Pretty, lesbian, local girl, lots of hate for the tourists (hate that isn’t unwarranted, Jihyo admits). Taller, blue hair, men’s dress shirt (blue and white stripes). Jihyo hadn’t gotten a good look at her shoes. She’d made Jihyo think and she’d made Jihyo laugh. And maybe it’s just been too long since Jihyo’s kissed a girl, but Jihyo can’t get the thought of Jeongyeon out of her head. 

She knows the boy Jinyoung had been with last night works at this cafe. She knows that the guy, JB, is friends with Jeongyeon. 

She knows that this is a bad idea. 

She goes inside anyway. 

The coffee shop still seems touristy, even to Jihyo, a tourist. A little bell rings above the doorway when she pushes open the door, tentative, hesitant - so much for a subtle entrance. The floor is hexagonal tile, like you’d find in a bathroom almost, and the walls are blue and mostly obscured by shelves. The shelves don’t have things for sale, at least it doesn’t _ look _ like - rather, the shelves have framed photographs of the beach, the town, even a couple inside what appears to be the coffee shop itself. 

Jihyo laughs to herself. Huh. Meta. 

She ventures in a few steps. The person behind the counter - Jeongyeon’s friend JB, at least that’s who she _ thinks _ it is - spots her sooner than Jihyo would have liked. “How can I help you?” he asks. 

“Umm.” says Jihyo. Wow, eloquent. She takes a few steps back to actually look at the menu. “A, um… vanilla…” 

She stumbles through her order, excruciatingly slow. She honestly feels bad for poor JB (assuming that’s who it is), but he seems to be taking it in fine stride, taking it down on an unassuming pad of paper in what she thinks is a Crayola colored pencil. 

Jihyo scrolls through her phone a bit while she waits. She tries to focus on just _ whatever _ \- the metal slats of the chair she’s sat in pressing into her back, Nayeon’s rapidfire barrage of texts about how cute she’s looking at the beach today (and pictures as evidence), how freaking cold it is in here - but all her brain can focus on is _ Jeongyeon Jeongyeon Jeongyeon _. Does Jeongyeon ever come in here, how does Jeongyeon like her coffee, has Jeongyeon thought about Jihyo at all. 

When her coffee’s ready, she and JB meet eyes again. Jihyo knows she only saw the guy for under a minute, but it’s definitely the same person - something about the way he holds himself is very distinctive. He doesn’t seem to recognize her at first, but something clicks behind his eyes in the moment between when she takes the coffee and when she’s right about to turn around and leave. 

“Hey!” he says, loud enough to startle her, snapping his fingers. “You were at the party last night! With Jeongyeon!”

“Yeah,” she replies. “I’m Jihyo. Hi.” 

Then she takes her coffee and bolts. 

  
  
  


She goes back the next day. Of course she does. JB’s there again, and he actually says hello to her while she stares up at the menu board and texts back and forth with Sana and Yugyeom trying to establish whether or not she’s supposed to get them coffee and, if yes, what do they want. Her order this time is longer and for four people rather than one, and she’s the only customer in again. 

JB tries to engage her in conversation while he’s making the coffee. “So I’ve been texting with Jinyoung. He says you’re in his group?” 

“Oh.” She hadn’t realized Jinyoung had exchanged numbers with this boy. Damn, that means he’s serious about him. “Yeah. We all know each other from college.” 

“He told me, yeah. He loves you all, apparently, doesn’t shut up about you.” 

When Jihyo next glances over at JB, she sees him blushing. “You like him a lot.” 

He flushes even more, but then turns the tables on her. “You like Jeongyeon a lot.” 

Jihyo nearly drops her phone onto the tile. 

“Her radio show is Monday through Thursday, eleven at night to one. Also, your coffee’s ready.”

“Thanks,” she grumbles on her way out. She’s a lot more thankful than she makes it sound. 

  
  
  


That night she downloads Radio Garden on her phone, and finds the local station, and waits. 

JB hadn’t misinformed her - it’s Jeongyeon’s voice all right, calm and measured, talking through tomorrow’s weather and the music she’s chosen simply and melodically. It makes Jihyo all happy inside to hear, smoothes her out and sweetens her like Jeongyeon’s timbre is honey-molasses-syrup-marmalade, slow and sludgy and divine. Sometime shortly after midnight she twists her headphones cord the wrong way and breaks it, so she listens unplugged for the rest of the hour. Sana doesn’t mind - Jihyo thinks she’s asleep already. 

Jihyo herself falls asleep with her mind replaying Jeongyeon’s voice back to her. _ Jeongyeon Jeongyeon Jeongyeon _. 

  
  
  


She tries to get Jinyoung to go to the coffee shop with her the next morning (because she knew JB would turn an amusing shade of scarlet), but he’s having a bad morning so she drags Bambam instead. Those two hit it off like a house on fire and she leaves with a smile on her face and JB’s number in her phone. 

The morning after that Jinyoung _ does _ go with her for coffee, and Jihyo gets inordinate pleasure out of playing wingwoman - the boys blush and smile awkwardly at each other and after an hour of sitting at a table browsing Twitter she thinks she sees them holding hands out of the corner of her eye. 

It’s while she’s basking in this, the satisfaction of having gotten Jinyoung together with his cute and pleasant local boy, that a teenage-sized force of nature slams down in the seat across from her. 

“Oh, god, hi. Who are you?” Jihyo rushes out, startled. The girl across from her has her hair in a high ponytail and distinctive, almost catlike eyes. The smirk growing on her face reminds Jihyo of her ex from last semester, Daniel - it’s playful but benevolent. 

“Lia. I work here. You’ve been in a lot, for a tourist.” 

Jihyo lets the moment hang, trying to make it awkward on Lia’s part. “...Yeah.”

“You’re the Jihyo that’s been messing with our Jeongyeon’s head, huh.” Jihyo flinches, sort of, intangibly, at this. Like, what is this, a shovel talk? A stay-away-from-the-locals-in-general talk? From a girl who’s clearly not even out of high school yet manages to be so wholly intimidating. “Well, listen,” Lia continues, “she needs to get her head out of her ass and date around a little and stop being so _ grumpy _ all the time. Mess with her head _ intentionally _, will you?” 

“...I?” trails off Jihyo, intelligently. 

Lia smiles with her whole face (Jihyo’s struck by the thought that this girl is freaking adorable), slams a three-by-five card face down onto the table, and stands up and leaves. She skips off. Teenagers. 

Jihyo turns the index card face-up. Written there, in a neat, rounded hand, is a coffee order. 

_ Jeongyeon: _

_ Vanilla latte w shot of cherry syrup _

_ Extra whip _

_ If you tell her I gave you this I’ll kill you and then she’ll kill me _

  
  
  


_ three. _

The night it rains, Sana finally gets fed up with Jihyo listening to the radio in their room without headphones on and banishes her to the car. “Go listen and only come back _ when you’re ready to sleep, _” she stresses. 

It’s not a bad existence, Jihyo ponders, to sit in Jinyoung’s shitty car at nighttime while it’s storming hard, listening to a pleasurable voice on the radio. She sits idling in the driveway for half an hour before getting restless, and starts driving in circles around town. 

She registers, idly, that the storm looks pretty bad. The wind is aggressively shoving the trees back and forth, and the thunder is loud and the lightning is bright, and it’s getting kind of hard to see through the windshield - she has to put the wipers on as full-force as they’ll go. She has to turn the radio volume all the way up to hear Jeongyeon. 

There’s no one else on the road, though. Despite the chaotic weather, she’s eerily calmed. 

This _ thing _ with Jeongyeon… she needs to do something about it. She needs to either stop, cold turkey, listening to the radio and going to JB’s coffee shop (it’s not his, but she thinks of it that way now and so does Jinyoung), or she needs to man up and find a way to talk to Jeongyeon again. No more of this, listening to the radio and pining and-

Oh. Her phone’s died. 

In Jihyo’s infallible idiocy, she’d kind of maybe sort of forgotten that she can get the radio station from the car and had kept her phone on speaker. And she didn’t bring a charger with her, either. Not that it would connect to Jinyoung’s fossil of a car anyway. Shit. 

She tunes the car radio to the local station. 

There’s so much she wants to go before they go home on Sunday. There’s still one ice cream place on the island they haven’t tried yet, and Sana wants to get an acai bowl from the donut trailer parked down the street from their rental. There’s this surf store Dahyun wants to go to, and she told Jihyo that Jackson’s friend Chaeyoung was going to teach her to stand up paddleboard. Speaking of Jackson, he’s trying to fit one more party in. 

Jihyo wants to say she was miserable at the party the other night. She wants to say that even talking to Jeongyeon wasn’t enough to balance out the _ bad _ that was being the only sober one and the noise and the too-tight dress she’d stolen from Bambam’s sister before they left. But the thing is, that’s not true. Even now in her soft blue sweater and white denim shorts she’s still trying to remember the feeling of the LBD because that’s what she’d been wearing with Jeongyeon and maybe if she recaptures that sensation she’ll recapture what it was like, in that moment. She’s going in circles both literally and figuratively, driving the car in a loop around the island and her thoughts always coming back around to _ Jeongyeon Jeongyeon Jeongyeon _. 

She thinks she’s almost nearly hit on something, something that will make up her mind, when the radio starts staticking in and out. 

At first she thinks it’s the car. Jinyoung’s car is old and shitty and is going to break down any day now and she doesn’t know why they used it for this trip in the first place and so she wouldn’t put it past the radio for it to break, but then when the radio fuzzes out entirely she thinks to look up and sees that, through the rain, all the lights are out. 

Okay. Power’s out. Her phone’s dead. No radio. Time to go home, she thinks. 

She only makes it two blocks before the car starts making a funny clunking noise. Weird-funny, not haha-funny. 

Oh shit oh shit oh shit. 

Yeah. The car breaks down for real, the lights dying except for one flashing someplace above the gas gauge, and it’s raining buckets and her phone’s dead and there’s no power. 

Jihyo knows she’s fucked and that the best option is just to sit in the car until… what? Until the morning? Until someone drives past? No. She’s gotta find someplace, someone with a phone so she can call the house and get someone to pick her up in Nayeon’s 2015 Toyota Sienna minivan. And call a tow company, if one even exists on this island, to fix Jinyoung’s car. 

She digs around the backseat for an umbrella and finds none. Well then. She sets her mouth, furrows her eyebrows, and readies herself to go outside in this monster storm. 

She isn’t sure if she slams the door all the way shut behind her. The rain’s loud enough that she wouldn’t be able to hear the certain thud of the door closing, and she’s certainly not looking back. She just runs past anyplace that looks like it wouldn’t be open this time of night - it’s midnight, or past that - past shops and towards, hopefully, someplace residential or - 

Jihyo turns a corner and stops stock-still because she’s in front of the radio station. The logo sign at the front isn’t lit, but she can just barely read it through the light of the lightning. 

Of course it would be open right now, right? Jeongyeon’s in there.

Jeongyeon’s in there. 

Jihyo knows she shouldn’t be just standing out in the rain, not when it’s pouring down like this, but she just doesn’t know what she should do. She doesn’t know if she’s ready to talk to Jeongyeon again, as dumb as that is. She doesn’t know if Jeongyeon will dismiss her again. 

But she needs to go in, so she takes a deep breath and gets all the way up to the front door before stalling again. 

She needs to do this because Jeongyeon will have a phone, Jihyo tells herself. Because she needs to tell her friends where she is. She needs to knock. 

She knocks. 

It’s hard and hammering because she’s soaking wet and desperate and also because if she doesn’t do it that way she’ll lose all her confidence. She hopes Jeongyeon hears it. 

After a moment, the door swings open. Jeongyeon’s shocked, she wears the shock on her face, but after a second of awkward (and intense) eye contact she wordlessly moves aside and lets Jihyo in. 

“I’m so sorry but it’s, you know, raining, and my phone died and Jinyoung’s car broke and I can’t call him do you have your phone on you-” 

“It’s at home in a bag of rice,” Jeongyeon answers, somewhat snappishly. 

“Oh.” Something inside Jihyo falls. She tries not to let it show on her face, but Jeongyeon’s noticed, and the other girl softens. 

“Sorry. Just. Yeah. And I walk here from home, so I don’t have a car. Sorry.” 

Jihyo swears under her breath. 

“You can… you can stay here, though,” Jeongyeon backtracks. “I’m not gonna make you go back outside. I’m an asshole, but I’m not _ that _ bad.” Then she mutters something under her breath that sounds to Jihyo like ‘even if you _ are _ a tourist’, but Jihyo elects to ignore that. 

Hey, this is what she wanted, isn’t it? An inciting incident, an excuse to talk to Jeongyeon and confront those pesky feelings face to face. She should use it. 

Jihyo follows Jeongyeon into what looks like the recording studio. There’s a folding chair, and a plastic-looking desk like a teacher’s desk in high school, and a microphone, and some other technology that Jihyo doesn’t have the brainspace to identify this time of night. Instead of sitting on the chair, Jeongyeon sits on the floor, which is a dark hardwood, back against the wall. Jihyo sits beside her. 

“Did losing the power - did you lose your signal or something? Because I was listening in the car and it-” 

The look Jeongyeon gives her is enough to make her want to shrink. Or maybe just run back into the rain again and go the whole way home on foot. 

“Sorry.”

Jihyo looks down at her hands, and they sit next to each other, decidedly not looking at each other (except for moments where Jihyo chances to lift her head up, to turn towards Jeongyeon, but only when she’s certain the other girl’s not looking). They listen to the rain. 

“...You were listening?” asks Jeongyeon after a while. Jihyo looks up and Jeongyeon’s still not looking at her. Still staring pointedly at the far wall. 

But sure, she’ll bite. 

“Yeah. JB, um, told me your show time.” 

She doesn’t know why she’s so nervous to tell Jeongyeon this. Maybe part of Jihyo is worried that she doesn’t know about JB and Jinyoung talking, maybe Jihyo’s worried that JB _ did _ mention her stops by the coffee shop and now it was something Jihyo should be embarrassed about. 

“_ Did _ he.” Jeongyeon replies. “Right. He mentioned you guys had been coming in.” 

“Him and Jinyoung really-”

“I _ know _.” Oddly, they share a laugh. “He isn’t usually this serious about his… I don’t want to call them conquests. Or at least he hasn’t been in a while.” On instinct, Jihyo turns her head to look at Jeongyeon. Their eyes meet, and it’s electric. 

Silence falls again. Their gazes are still locked. Jihyo doesn’t want to be the first to look away. 

It thunders loud outside, at a volume and timbre Jihyo hadn’t quite known was possible, and they both flinch, and the moment breaks. So they sit for a little while longer, and they listen to the rain. 

“So how did you break your phone?” Jihyo asks. She doesn’t like the quiet. 

“Oh.” Jeongyeon laughs. “Well. Actually. Seungmin - that’s one of the other locals - dropped it in a pitcher of lemonade.”

“...How.”

“Listen, I don’t know. I went to the bathroom and left my phone on the kitchen counter like a normal human being and next thing I know Seungmin’s saying words his mom would wash his mouth out for and my phone’s been drowned.” She makes a face. “I love him, but I don’t know how he possibly could have done that.” 

“Boys,” Jihyo dismisses. 

Jeongyeon nods sagely. “Boys.” 

It comes out that Jeongyeon is sort of a mother figure to all the queer kids on the island. Mina and Chaeryeong, bisexual; Lia, like Jeongyeon herself, lesbian; JB, Jamie, and Seungmin, trans; Chris, gay. That Jeongyeon isn’t the oldest, no, that’s JB, but she’s the one who stepped up when Lia needed someplace to stay the night, when someone tried to force Chaeryeong into picking a side through means that make Jihyo shudder to hear and Jeongyeon grimace to tell, because she was the first to get her own place that she shares, now, with a few of the others. That she’s JB’s impulse control and Mina’s rationality and a parent to all of the little ones. They talk and talk and Jihyo _ learns _ so much, about a world she didn’t think could exist, outside of the little bubble that’s her school. 

Jihyo talks too - about Nayeon and Jinyoung and Sana, Dahyun and Yugyeom and Bambam, about shy quiet comings-out one by one starting from Nayeon who started her first year confident in herself and this confidence radiating out to Sana, to Jinyoung, to Bambam, to Jihyo herself. About her and Yerin keeping a bowl of chocolate and a package of tea in their room because the younger ones would come in for advice, and Nayeon doing something similar. About parents who didn’t understand, about Bambam and Yugyeom calling Nayeon their mom because they lived things now, at school, that they could never tell their own. About nights stayed up on the dorm room floor, nights spent crying on the braided rug Sana had bought from Target, nights under the stars by the pond or in the amphitheater or on the roof of the art building. 

Either way, Jihyo thinks, it’s family. She has her family that matters, and Jeongyeon has her family as well, this group of hers. Family’s not blood, it’s friendship and love, and she and Jeongyeon both know that. 

She thinks they understand each other a little more, now. 

It’s still raining. It feels less awkward now, sitting on the floor of the broadcast room with their backs against the stucco wall and feet on the gray tile. Jihyo wouldn’t have thought they’d have tile in a room like this - she’d have expected carpet. Something to absorb the sound. 

“Why do you hate us so much?” she asks. 

Jeongyeon turns. “Who’s _ us _?”

“You know.” Jihyo fidgets. “Tourists.”

The other girl sighs. “I thought I explained this to you at the party…” 

Jihyo remembers. “I guess it felt like there was something more to it.” 

Jeongyeon stretches. Her body - it’s long and flexible, mesmerizing for Jihyo to watch. Arms up over her head, hands flexing, back bending like she’d been a gymnast. Rolls her wrists a little, shifts her hips, reaches her legs out with toes pointed. Her soft grey sweater moves with her, closely knit and looking almost like chain mail over her black camisole; the navy leggings hugging her legs closely, tightly, distract Jihyo until her eyes reach the chunky, jarring black docs, startling her? Because she’d expected Jeongyeon to be wearing something more like ballet flats, and she hadn’t thought to look at her shoes before. 

“No, it’s like I said before.” Jeongyeon scowls - not at Jihyo, at the floor, at the concept of… what Jihyo stands for. “You dirty up our island. You’re just… generally assholes, you make our livelihoods to _ serve _ you and then when you leave we’re left scrambling. So people leave. They go off to their big fancy colleges and universities-” she says this with distaste, and Jihyo knows that this is, at least a little, a jab at her. “Chaeyeon went to California, Somi went to Amsterdam, Sika and Yoonhye might be at the state school but they never come back anyway so it doesn’t matter. When Woojin went off to school David just went with him, even though he was barely sixteen then. Loha went all the way to Japan, Aisha to China, Megan took this internship where she just travels and travels and never settles down. It’s you people who drive them away. You and your trash and your littering and, and, and your _ words _-” 

Jeongyeon seems overcome. 

“Are you alright?”

Her response is quiet. “Chaeryeong misses her sister. A lot. Me and Mina, we try to be enough for her, so does Lia, but we just don’t know if that’s enough. We’re all just stuck here. Liminal. 

“And she wants to go someplace she can be herself, be _ out _, like her sister did, you know? And Woojin softblocked us all on Instagram, like he’s embarrassed to be from here, from the sticks, from - from - whatever. I hate being someplace - someone - that they’re embarrassed of.

“I wish they knew that they were the lucky ones. The ones who got out. I mean, I love it here, I do, but I hate that my friends and I are the only blue votes in a sea of red, that the only people we can _ really _ tell is each other. Chaeyeon - she earned her way out, merit scholarship, all that. Ryeong doesn’t know if she can, or even if she wants to. It’s you people that make us unsure, that make our island cynical, that makes everything go to shit. You drive them away.” 

All Jihyo can do for a minute is stare. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” 

Jihyo knows, on some level, that tourism is bad. That college students are wasteful and loud, and that many of the people who vacation here are conservative, and that this is the kind of place that makes people want out. But she’d never quite considered, before, that the people who lived in these kinds of places were, well - for lack of a better word, _ real _. Affected, by these things she and those like her did. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Hah,” says Jeongyeon cynically. “One _ sorry _ doesn’t really do much. Even if you _ did _ change because you talked to me, well, you know, that’s just you.” 

Jihyo processes this. She admits it’s sort of a hard thing to hear - that no matter how much remorse she has, she won’t change a thing. She wonders briefly if this is what it feels like to be a straight ally. 

“You know,” she says. “Jackson’s hosting another party at the end of the week. Cause him and his crew are leaving, and so are me and mine. I figure I’ll be the only sober one again… I mean… JB might already know, because him and Jinyoung are… well…” Jihyo trails off. She steeples her fingers together awkwardly - maybe this was too much. Maybe she shouldn’t have chosen _ this _, of all things, to pick the conversation back up again. 

The lights above them flicker. Then they turn back on. 

  
  
  


Jihyo walks home in bare feet, her shoes and socks soaked through, dangling in her hand. She remembers the address, and Jeongyeon knows the way. The sidewalk is wet beneath her. She’ll call a tow for Jinyoung’s shitty car once she gets home. 

It’s quiet. Jihyo, against all better judgement, walks a little bit ahead. Jeongyeon behind her only tells her where to turn - that’s all either of them say, really, as they make their way. 

There’s birds, somewhere. Jihyo doesn’t think they’re seagulls. And it’s still windy, and the wind blows, getting Jeongyeon’s hair all in her face which is something Jihyo knows without having to look behind her because she hears Jeongyeon _ ptah _ing the hair out of her mouth every so often. Jihyo’s hair is scraped into a ponytail with the help of a scrunchie she thinks she’d swiped from Nayeon but it could have also been Sana’s - or it could have started life as being Nayeon’s and came into Jihyo’s by way of Sana or even the other way around. 

“Oh,” Jihyo says, when they turn onto the street the house is on. “We’re - we’re here.” 

“Yeah,” Jeongyeon confirms cleanly. 

“Well, so, uh - will I be seeing you - wait, never mind. Bye, I guess.” 

“Bye, love you,” responds Jeongyeon. Her bid goodbye is so nonchalant, so practiced-sounding that for a moment it doesn’t register with either of them what exactly it had contained. 

Jihyo freezes. She turns her gaze firmly to the horizon, because she doesn’t think she can meet Jeongyeon in the eyes - not that she was confident in that before. 

“Sorry, I - with my friends, I don’t really - that’s on me, I - that’s nothing, okay? - god - sorry.” Jeongyeon sputters from behind her. Jihyo keeps her eyes on the horizon until she hears footsteps walking away. She turns to face the door and then she waits just a little longer. And then she knocks, and the day begins to dawn, and Dahyun is there to let her in. 

  
  
  


_ four. _

She keeps telling herself that it’s going to be fine. 

Jeongyeon paces around her room. She’s gonna go, she thinks to herself as her bare feet hit the blue wall-to-wall carpeting. She’s gonna go and she’s gonna tell Jihyo that… what… that she wants to kiss her? What? No.

She’s not gonna go, she thinks to herself as she passes by the ugly white walls that she hasn’t bothered to try and spruce up. It’s a mistake to lead on the tourist girl, and JB can handle himself and she can make Mina see that. It will be fine if she doesn’t go. 

Jeongyeon shouldn’t go.

She goes. 

  
  
  


JB drives again. She’d offered, because JB had had to drive an hour out of town earlier for some bullshit with his endocrinologist, but he’s weirdly possessive about his car and had insisted to Jeongyeon that it would be fine. 

He drives them over there, and he parks. It’s just that Jeongyeon can’t make herself get out of the car. 

“You good?” he asks, voice cracking, and Jeongyeon chuckles in spite of herself. 

“I’m stuck,” she says, staring at the vinyl of the seat. It’s an ugly color, sort of a cream-grey, and would be sticking to the backs of her legs right now if she’d worn something shorter. Most of the inside of the car is this color. 

“You’re stuck,” repeats JB. He sounds quizzical. Well, Jeongyeon wasn’t exactly specific, was she. 

“I don’t know what to do,” she answers, as though that helps anything, and then she says, “I don’t _ wanna _ be stuck anymore.”

This time, it’s her voice that breaks. 

She’s stuck in more ways than one, isn’t she. She’s stuck here in this car and she’s stuck in her indecision and she’s stuck on this island, that she _ loves _ , but how many times has she daydreamed about taking the ACT seriously and actually _ getting out _? About being able to love, freely, open and loud? About not being just another local? 

Jeongyeon loves her home and she loves her family but there’s something about Jihyo that seems like the key to a door that leads to something greater and as much as she wants to throw that key away, every time she looks down it’s still in her hand. 

“Oh, Jeongyeon.” JB murmurs, his hand reaching across the car to rest on her shoulder. 

“There’s nothing holding me here,” she muses, even as her voice becomes thicker and thicker. “If I wanted to leave, I could. I could have. Ages ago.” 

JB just nods. 

“This is my home - _ you guys _ are my home,” Jeongyeon continues. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave this place - and you - behind.” 

“Oh.” And is she just imagining it, or does he sound gutted, somehow? 

How much heartbreak can fit into one syllable? The answer: a lot. 

“I don’t want to throw all of me away because of just some girl,” Jeongyeon cries - yes, she’s crying, screw it, she’ll admit it, she’s honest enough. “This, here, is who I am. Not someone who goes chasing after a mainland girl and never comes home.” 

JB has to ponder that. Jeongyeon looks over at him for maybe the first time since she got in the car, and she wonders what he’s thinking. She wonders, as she peeks through the curtain she’s sewn herself of bright blue hair and teary eyes. 

“If anyone were to come back,” he says finally, “it would be you. But Jeongyeon, even if you do get with this girl, that doesn’t mean you have to leave. Long distance is a thing. Jinyoung and I-” JB stops, embarrassed. “Well, we’re going to try. ...I really like him.”

“I know that,” Jeongyeon sighs. JB’s phone lights up, and he turns it face-down. “But even then, it still feels like a betrayal. A gateway drug.” 

What she doesn’t say is that the last time she saw Jihyo, she said “I love you”. A slip, really, a glitch - she’s so used to walking her friends places that it’s just natural, now. What she doesn’t say is that as much as she’s afraid of the betrayal getting with a mainland girl would be, she’s almost as afraid or more of the awkwardness. 

“Listen,” JB tells her. “I’m gonna go inside. You can come in whenever you want. But just know, Jeongyeon, that you’re not betraying us if you go long-distance with her. That’s not how it works. You’re allowed to want, Jeongyeon, and you’re allowed to have.”

  
  
  


_ after. _  
  


“They’re gonna come down this weekend,” Jeongyeon says to her without looking up from her phone. She has the stupidest smile on her face, and it makes Mina laugh. 

“The others too? Or just Jinyoung and Jihyo?” 

“No, I think they said they’re bringing Nayeon with this time,” she answers. 

Mina can’t believe either couple has stayed together this long. It got pretty rocky in the winter, after Jamie left - Jeongyeon and Jihyo ended up having a pretty frosty November wherein JB (and Mina can’t speak for Jinyoung but she’s sure he helped too) was paddling desperately to keep them talking. It passed, of course. And then at the beginning of tourist season Jinyoung had started messaging Mina, Jeongyeon, and Chris like crazy because he was so worried about JB having a fling. 

But it’s been a little over a year now, the air just starting to get cold again and the tourist traffic just starting to slow. Mina is hopeful. 

“Cool,” she tells Jeongyeon. “I’m excited."

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA i've had this idea for literally over a year and party of destiny ficfest gave me the final push i needed to set it in motion so
> 
> find me on twt @stillpristin or on tumblr @everykissbeginswith! <3


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